


A Small Kindness

by auburn



Series: Kindness [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:36:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1542800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auburn/pseuds/auburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which the Black Widow Has Pointy Elbows, Bruce Is Zen, Sam and Thor Are Hungry, Clint's Feet Are Cold and the Winter Soldier Does Not Cuddle (Much). Or, the Avengers have a new cellmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Small Kindness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eretria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eretria/gifts).



> Because eretria finally saw Cap 2 and made the begging eyes at me. Unbeta-ed. First toe dipped in this fandom.
> 
> Set in a post Cap 2, Thor 2, Iron Man 3 universe in which the Winter Soldier knows he was James Buchanan Barnes, but for now he's more interested in taking down his former HYDRA owners than getting those memories back.

Clint glanced around the dim confines of the cell and mumbled, "I can't decide if they're stupid or not for sticking us all in here together." On the one hand, it meant only guarding one cell. On the other hand, even one Avenger was a handful. Clint, Natasha, Bruce, Thor and their newest addition, Sam, together should have been enough to bust out of anywhere.

Unfortunately, the cold, damp stone walls of the cell they'd been shoved into possessed some innate dampening field. Thor was reduced to human level strength and no matter how angry Bruce got he still didn't Hulk out.

Clint, Natasha and Sam had all been stripped down to their underwear. Well, Bruce and Thor had been as well, but in their cases it was for humiliation not to remove anything they might use to break out.

"They just don't have any other cells," came a voice from the blind corner to the right of the door they'd been pushed through. It was rusty and whoever it came from hadn't even moved, but Clint still flushed in embarrassment he hadn't noticed the cell wasn't empty immediately.

The lack of light made it hard to make out anything about their fellow prisoner, other than pale skin, darkish hair and a glint of what looked like metal.

Natasha tensed and Sam groaned.

"You know him?" Clint asked them.

"The Winter Soldier," Natasha replied.

"Better and effing better," Clint muttered.

"A soldier," Thor repeated. "A fellow fighter." He nodded. "Well met."

The Winter Soldier's expression didn't even give away a flicker of the _what the hell?_ that Thor usually prompted. He just watched them as they gave the cell a hapless search. Clint knew the assassin had already searched it for any way out, but some things you just had to do yourself too. He kept an eye on their cellmate, but the Winter Soldier stayed on his feet, staking out the corner where no one could come at him from the back or sides.

He wondered why their captors hadn't removed the metal arm. 

Bruce took the corner opposite the Winter Soldier's and folded himself into one of his meditation poses. Eventually Thor and Natasha joined him. Clint paced a little longer, but there was nothing to do.

"Anyone want to play I Spy?" he asked.

"I spy someone I'm going to smack," Natasha said flatly.

"What is this I Spy?" Thor asked.

"A game," Bruce told him quietly. "Not one we're going to play either."

"Party poopers," Clint named them all.

The cell was cold when they walked in, but he'd swear it was getting colder. Their breath had begun to smoke when they exhaled. While they'd been rustling around, checking it out, it hadn't been as evident, but the chill had begun creeping in once they gave that up.

He glanced over to where the Winter Soldier had sunk down in a heat-saving crouch and wondered how the guy was handling it. 

"How long have you been in here?" Clint asked.

"Leave him alone," Natasha snapped. She was keeping a close eye on the assassin, no doubt because she had a better idea of how dangerous he was, even in his skivvies, than the rest of them.

The Winter Soldier surprised them both by answering. "Two days."

"Sucks."

"Do they feed us?" Bruce inquired. Clint heard Thor's stomach rumble in the quiet that followed.

"Once a day."

"Well, thanks for the information."

Clint began rubbing his hands over his upper arms.

"Get over here," Natasha said.

Thor was already leaning in close to Bruce and Natasha slotted herself between them. Clint gave her the stink-eye for that. Sam took a place on Bruce's other side.

"We should conserve our body heat," Sam said.

"Fine, but I'm cuddling Thor. Nat has pointy elbows."

Bruce gave out a long suffering sigh, while the filthy look Natasha gave him promised she'd be sticking Clint with other pointy things once they were out of here. 

Thor slung a heavy arm around Clint's shoulders and pulled him in close. "'Tis similar to hunting trips with the Warriors Three and Lady Sif," he declared. 

"Or the Three Musketeers," Sam mumbled.

"Does that make our friend over there in the corner D'Artagnan?" Bruce had to ask.

"More importantly, does that make Nat Milady De Winter?" Clint quipped.

"You're looking more and more like a Tauntaun," she said flatly. Maybe they should be glad the captors had taken away all of Natasha's knives.

Clint glanced over and sure enough the Winter Soldier was glaring at them through a curtain of dark hair. Clint snuggled in closer to Thor. The Thunder God was toasty warm compared to Clint. While he might have been embarrassed and reluctant to tangle his feet up with three other guys normally, Clint had a strong moral stance against hypothermia. He wasn't as pragmatic as Natasha, (he also wasn't counting on cuddling Natasha because he knew she had chronically cold feet even in summer time) but he also wasn't going to get frostbite when he had teammates to huddle up to. Unlike the poor bastard over there.

Who was actually, once upon a time, Captain America's best friend. Clint would bet Cap and Bucky had huddled together more than once while the Howling Commandos were behind enemy lines during World War II. From the things Steve had let slip since they'd discovered the Winter Soldier had once been Bucky Barnes, Clint knew that Steve's old friend had kept him alive before the super soldier serum and the war too. It was killing Steve not to be able to do anything for Bucky as he was now, because despite dragging Steve out of the Potomac, it didn't seem like he'd remembered Steve or any of his past before becoming the Winter Soldier.

They were probably lucky the guy wasn't trying to kill them all just for being in the same cell with him.

But he had to be freezing over there, especially after two days...

Aw, crap, now Clint felt guilty. He could just imagine Steve's face when they were rescued. He could imagine Stark's face too (there would be comments about failing to invite him to the team orgy), but that was just something that would make Clint deck him. He wouldn't be able to deck Steve for looking all heartbroken and disappointed in them all.

"Anyone have any idea who these yahoos are anyway?" Sam asked in the chilly silence.

"Well, probably not HYDRA since he's in here," Clint said without thinking.

The Winter Soldier shifted. "I'm not HYDRA." His voice didn't give away if he was annoyed, but then again... he'd cared enough to contradict Clint. So he probably was. Chalk up a point for Barton. Also, Steve would be happy his old buddy wasn't playing for the Big Bad.

Bruce "So it is HYDRA?"

"No."

Clint watched the Winter Soldier's breath smoke. He wondered if the metal arm was cold. 

"So any idea who our hosts are?" Sam asked. None of them had any clue. One minute they'd been fighting mutated lizard men in downtown Los Angeles (talk about clichés... ) the next they'd all woken up strapped down to gurneys in an ugly room before being herded at gunpoint by masked guards into the cell. Either they'd been stunned with something or drugged.

"Ethnic Latverian extremists."

Did the Winter Soldier's voice chatter a little there?

"What the hell do ethnic Latverian extremists want with the Avengers?" Sam wondered. "Not to mention you."

Clint could have answered, but Natasha beat him to it. "Nothing, but they can sell us all to HYDRA in exchange for funds and weaponry to try and unseat Victor Von Doom. Expatriate Latverians have been hatching plans to take back the country since Latveria regained its independence during the break up of the Soviet Union and the Von Dooms returned to power."

"And I'd bet HYDRA would pay a pretty penny to have you back," Clint said to the Winter Soldier, "wouldn't they?"

"Yes."

"That's why he's sharing intel with us," Natasha explained to Thor and Bruce. "He wants to make sure we don't leave him here when we break out."

"We wouldn't anyway, would we?" Bruce asked.

"We will not abandon the Captain's shield-brother in durance," Thor said.

"We're not allies."

Clint made a fizzling sound at him. Was the guy trying to convince them to not help him? So much must be messed up in the poor bastard's head, Clint guessed, after seventy years of mind wipes and brainwashing that he might be. It was kind of impressive that he'd broken away from HYDRA at all.

He remembered, as in a nightmare, existence under Loki's mind control. It made him shudder even three years later. Dying didn't scare him the way the prospect of ever having his self taken away from like that again did.

Thor must have felt the shiver, because he tightened his arm around Clint's shoulder. Since he wasn't going to explain to Thor or anyone (ever) that the tremble was from fear (hah!) or fear of what (good way to piss of the Winter Soldier if he overheard and that was a hot button), Clint went with it. After a while, he even closed his eyes and sort of drifted. Whatever they'd been hit with had left him exhausted and wobbly anyway; sleeping off the remaining effects seemed like a decent idea.

No one said anything more for a while or Clint might have missed the little noises from the opposite corner (the trade-off of superb eyesight for nearly deaf in one ear was one he'd make, but it was still a pain in his derriere). He knew that meant all the others were hearing the uncomfortable shifting (shivering) and the choked back coughs. 

Crap. Crappity crap. Natasha was going to kill him for this.

Clint squirmed free of Thor's arm.

"Whuzzah?" Sam muttered.

"Don't mind me," Clint muttered back. "Just doing something stupid." 

He walked slowly over to where the Winter Soldier was backed up to the walls, deliberately making a little noise since this wasn't someone you wanted to startle, and crouched. Blue eyes slitted open – just a suspicious glitter through long lashes – and watched him. Careful to not touch just in case, Clint met his gaze. "Hey," he said. "You should come over and share with us. Everybody gains – "

Natasha made a sound like a strangled cat, proving she was awake and listening. Clint hadn't doubted it anyway.

"Why?" The Winter Soldier – the guy, Clint corrected himself, James maybe – sounded hoarser than earlier. He had to be miserable, no matter how stoic he'd been trained to be, even with whatever knock-off version of the super soldier serum HYDRA and the Soviets had pumped into him. Even Steve felt the cold, hell, Steve had frozen, which was really kind of ironic. Mother Nature had pulled the same trick with him that the Soviets had with the Winter Soldier. 

"Man, you may be the Winter Soldier, but you have to be freezing over here."

"Why?"

"Because... "

"Because we're decent human beings and no one wants to see you turn blue over there," Sam called. "Just get your ass over here and get warm."

"Join us, comrade," Thor called.

Maybe it was the 'comrade'. Maybe it was the convulsive shiver that Clint couldn't miss up so close, but the Winter Soldier got up and silently followed Clint back to their pile of near-nakedness. 

He had to be insane to want to cuddle up with a brainwashed Soviet (ex-Soviet, faked Soviet, not Soviet after all?) super assassin, but he felt for the guy. He really did.

Also, shit, that arm was ice cold! "Holy crap," Clint blurted. "You must hate the cold with the way that thing conducts it."

The Winter Soldier – he had to stop thinking of the guy as that – sat tense as a strung wire next to him, barely touching Clint at his shoulder and elbow.

"Okay, this isn't working, man. You have to cuddle. You know, snuggle up. I know, I know, getting all up close and personal with yours truly is overwhelming – "

Fuck if the Winter Soldier's elbows weren't just as pointy as Natasha's. Maybe it was something they taught in the Red Room. Rib jabbing. Clint grimaced. He'd seen Natasha use an elbow jab to smash a goon's nose back into his sinuses (and possibly the Jurassic; she hit hard) once. That was something taught in the Red Room.

He took the jab as a signal they were comfortable enough to main contact now and wiggled and grabbed until he had the guy stuffed up between Thor's side and his own. That stuck Thor with the icy metal arm too. Clint felt no shame. Thor regularly slept with a magic hammer, he could deal.

"This is a bad idea," Natasha whispered.

"Aw, come on, we're all in this together now," Sam whispered back.

"I'm trying to sleep," Bruce grumbled, "Could you all shut up?"

"You know, this might be our only chance to piss off Bruce without getting stomped by the Big Guy," Clint had to say.

"You won't like me when I'm sleep deprived. And I have a long memory."

Clint shrugged off the warning. Bruce didn't hold grudges. Which was a good thing. Some people pretty much ran on rage (Fury, anyone?). Besides, once they got out of here, Bruce would be busy being angry and being the Hulk on these idiots holding them to remember being pissed at Clint. He hoped.

The Winter Soldier sat still next to him or as still as a guy trembling with cold could be. A little huff of air escaped him though, that had to be humor. Not quite a laugh, but a precursor to one. Clint stifled a grin. There was a human being in there. Maybe not Steve's BFF, but someone worth salvaging. So what if he was a little damaged (a lot). All of the Avengers were rejects. Sort of. Even Thor's pops had got sick of him and tossed him off to Earth to live as a human for a while that time. Even Steve was kind of lost, dropped into the present after being on ice for so long. Clint tucked his feet over the Winter Soldier's toes.

"Why?" he asked again, very low, low enough probably only Natasha heard it besides Clint.

Clint rested his hand in the guy's hair and tried to urge him to lay his head against Clint's shoulder. It didn't work; the Winter Soldier stayed in a sort of sitting 'at attention'.

"You ask why a lot."

"You answer." It sounded plaintive to Clint, as if those questions were always hovering behind his eyes, silenced in his mouth, and no one had ever answered them before, maybe had even punished him for asking until he didn't any longer.

"Yeah, well, I'm – we're – not going to let anyone suffer that doesn't have to."

"Not even if they deserve it?"

Oh boy. No, he wasn't touching that pile of steaming crapola with a ten foot pole.

"You don't," Clint stated. "Wouldn't even if you did, but you don't." It wasn't the gun's fault when it was fired at someone. It wasn't the Winter Soldier's fault he'd been used to kill. But Clint had a feeling that argument would do more harm than good, because the last thing this guy needed was someone else telling him he was nothing more than a weapon.

Another little huff of breath sounded in his ear, but no objection came, and the Winter Soldier subtly leaned into Clint, muscles loosening enough that Clint relaxed and half drowsed through the rest of the night. He felt mostly confident the Winter Soldier wouldn't try to strangle him and if he did, Natasha would stop him.

The attenuated snaps and booms of gunfire and Iron Man's repulsors, barely audible through the thick stone walls confining them, brought all of them to alertness sometime before dawn. 

"Sounds like the cavalry to me," Sam commented.

"Thought you were a PJ, not Air Cav?" Clint teased.

"Right now, I don't care if it's horse cavalry, as long as I get some clothes, something to eat and something to shoot."

On cue, Bruce, Natasha and Thor's stomachs all rumbled. Clint got the feeling any horses showing up might be in danger of being eaten for breakfast.

Thor stretched and yawned and rose to his feet with a pained grunt. Clint guessed human strength meant human muscles and human stiff after a night on a cold stone floor. Thor wasn't used to it.

The Winter Soldier rose as well, much more smoothly. Clint knew he hadn't slept at all, but at least he wasn't shaking with cold any longer.

Natasha was surreptitiously tugging her underwear up and her sports bra down. Sam scrubbed his hands over his face and then his head.

Clint rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen them up. The older he got (not that he was old, nope, he was... seasoned, yep, that was it) the longer it took to shake the aches out of his muscles.

The Winter Soldier was doing... something to his metal arm. Natasha was watching him, narrow-eyed and suspicious, so Clint had to look too. He was opening up a hidden space in the forearm and taking something out. It really looked like explosive. The way he shaped it to the lock on the door into the cell only confirmed it. Then he opened another hideyhole in the arm's biceps and brought out a detonator, which he proceeded to program, jam into the explosive, and activate.

"Fire in the hole," the Winter Soldier announced, perfectly blasé, as he returned to his corner of the cell.

"Wha – ?" Bruce started to say.

"Get down!" Clint and Sam chorused. Natasha tackled Thor's knees, taking him down like a felled tree (Clint winced as he landed on Nat, because that had to hurt). 

Everyone ducked and covered (as much as you can cover when all you have is underwear and thankful for that much). With a boom that made his ears hurt, the lock and a chunk of the door vaporized. Nasty slivers of hardwood nearly six inches long went flying, but all toward the ceiling and no one ended up impaled. The Winter Soldier turned out to be very good at shaping a charge to control the debris thrown, for which Clint felt appropriately grateful, though what he really felt was pissed off.

The sound of Iron Man's repulsors was getting closer (louder). He thought they had maybe two minutes before Tony showed up to sarcastically ask why they were all hanging out in a cell when the door was open.

"Why didn't you do that last night!?" Clint yelled.

The Winter Soldier pushed the door open. "Had to wait for a distraction. Guards are all gone thanks to Stark and Captain America now."

He scooped up one of the nastier, stake-length splinters, slammed the door hard right into a pair of on-coming guards, then spun and threw the splinter at a third coming from the other direction. It impaled the poor guy almost as deep as one of Clint's arrows would have.

"Almost all the guards," the Winter Soldier corrected himself. He began walking away down the corridor.

"Well, are we going to just hang around here?" Bruce asked.

"I vote no," Sam said.

"Let us smite our enemies vigorously," Thor agreed.

"That is why you should never trust the Winter Soldier," Natasha whispered to Clint as she stalked out of the cell. She picked up a splinter of her own on her way.

"Hey, at least Stark isn't going to be able to say he rescued us."

Natasha muttered something in Russian about Tony and grandchildren. Clint thought it meant she'd make sure Tony never had any.

The Winter Soldier lingered a moment longer at the end of the corridor. Smoke was billowing into it from somewhere. Clint knew he'd disappear, off to do in whoever had managed to take him prisoner (if that hadn't been a ploy the whole time to get him inside their operation), in another moment. He considered pleading with the guy to stick around and talk to Steve, but figured it would be pointless. The Winter Soldier didn't remember Steve or anything from their past as far as they'd been able to figure out. When he spoke again, it surprised Clint.

"Thank you."

"Oh. Sure. No problem."

"It was... kind."

Clint would bet this guy couldn't remember anyone ever being kind to him. What was surprising was that he could even recognize it.

"Hey," Clint called out. "Take care of yourself."

A flicker of curiosity broke the stoic mask briefly, maybe even a flicker of amusement as the Winter Soldier asked, "Why?"

"I don't sleep with just every ex-HYDRA assassin out there, you know."

"You don't?" Bruce gibed under his breath and grunted, presumably from another encounter with one of Natasha's elbows.

Clint grinned as the Winter Soldier's mouth twitched into a smile for just a second before he loped away. He figured that was as good a beginning as they could hope for and a little kindness would be enough to bring the Winter Soldier back again eventually.


End file.
